


green eyes pie

by StarlightDragon



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Human, Dean Loves Pie, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, First Meetings, Fluff, Fluff and Crack, M/M, Pie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-25
Updated: 2015-08-25
Packaged: 2018-04-17 06:15:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4655754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarlightDragon/pseuds/StarlightDragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean Winchester is the successful owner of the only pie shop in town. He loves his job and he's got a great thing going, but he never expected a man named Castiel Novak to move to town and open up a coffee shop right next door.</p>
            </blockquote>





	green eyes pie

**Author's Note:**

> dean-threw-his-pie-for-cas.tumblr.com claims partial credit for this idea. i don't actually remember this happening but it may be true and either way you should check out her blog because it's awesome.
> 
> i really love samandriel. he's barely mentioned in this but i wanted you all to know anyway. this fic also features surprise guest appearances from gabriel, balthazar and krissy chambers, in case you were wondering if the unnamed people have identities in my head

Green Eyes Pie has never just sold pie. As the name would suggest, pie is what it's best known for, but go in there before work in the morning and the owner will sell you bacon on a bagel, or a cinnamon roll. At lunchtime, he puts out sandwiches, and pizza on Fridays, flavor of the week. Then, at the end of the day when things are winding down before closing time he'll often bake a batch of brownies, or cupcakes with mountains of frosting.

And coffee, too. There's always coffee, steaming hot and ready to be poured, because no matter what time of day it is, coffee is always the perfect accompaniment to pie. It's just regular coffee, served black in a paper cup. It's nothing frothy with a weird Italian name and it's not made in a machine that looks like a medieval torture device, but it's got a good flavor and all the customers say it's better than instant.

Which is why Dean Winchester, owner and head chef at Green Eyes Pie, is really, genuinely, honest-to-God angry when one of those tiny hipster coffee shops opens right next door to him.

The other half of the building has been empty for years, and people are always saying Dean should expand into it, but that would mean hiring more staff and being more on the business end of things and he kind of likes the way things are right now, just him and a handful of kids who help out part time. He makes enough money as is to cover ingredients and pay rent on the apartment above the store, and why change what's already a good thing? So Dean's happy when he sees some kind of construction going on there. That is, until the shop actually opens, and Dean realizes what it is.

He storms into Trench Coat Coffee just after one o'clock on opening day, as soon as he's taken his famous cherry pie out of the oven, leaving Samandriel to cover the customers coming in on their lunch breaks. Dean walks up to the counter of the coffee shop and slams his hand down on it, demanding to speak to the owner.

There's a short guy who needs a haircut lounging behind the counter, and he rolls his eyes at Dean. "He's in the back. He's trying to think up clever drink names. I'll go get him for you."

Dean glances around the shop while he waits for the manager. It's trying way too hard, he determines. It's obviously supposed to look like an old fashioned classroom but the scratched wooden chairs just look uncomfortable to sit on and the graffiti on the tables is so obviously fake and the bright colored finger paintings on the walls are uncomfortable garish and overall it can't seem to make up its mind which grade level it's supposed to represent. The pie shop is simple. There's a giant glass case full of food, a counter to pay at, and a few plastic tables in case it just smells _so good_ that you can't wait until you get home to eat it, and not a whole lot else.

"You wanted to see me?"

Dean turns around, and completely forgets his pie shop even exists. As soon as his eyes meet those of the man in front of him, he's gone, lost in the kind of face that's guaranteed to fill his dreams for the next few nights. If Dean was asked to picture his ideal man, he thinks that he'd probably imagine someone who looked something like this. Not the eyes, though. The eyes are so beautiful that Dean's imagination could never possibly come up with them... it's not even how blue they are; it's the way they sparkle with so much life and happiness, and Dean doesn't want to do anything to dull that. He doesn't want to get mad at the guy for making fancy coffee and potentially stealing Dean's business because Dean couldn't stand being the cause of that sparkle disappearing.

And then another man walks past wearing the same uniform as the owner, and he's pushing a cart laden with store bought cakes and cookies and _pies_ , and now Dean doesn't give a fuck about the pretty eyes.

"What the hell are those?" he demands, pointing to the cart.

The owner - _Castiel_ , according to the name tag - raises one eyebrow, perfectly calm. "Restocking. First day was more of a success than we expected. Food cabinet's pretty much out."

He points to an area under the counter that's definitely supposed to look like brightly colored cubby holes, each one with space for a different kind of food.

"Alright, listen up," Dean says, stepping forward into the man's personal space. A few minutes ago he'd have been too intimidated to do anything like that, but now? He was doing it _for the pie_. "This? This is not okay. See, I own the bakery next door. The pie place. And I've been there for a long time, and I've given the town all the food it needs. And you come onto my turf, and you're trying to feed the locals store bought pie? No. I'm not standing for it. It'd be okay if you were baking better pie than me, I could accept that defeat, but I've tried these brands, and they're disgusting! It's... an outrage, is what it is!"

He finishes his speech and purses his lips into what he hopes is a scary face that will force this guy to take him seriously, but Castiel is laughing, his face scrunching up and looking genuinely amused.

"I'm not taking business away from you. The average man on the street these days sees coffee as far more important than pie. You can keep your pie purism - this is more than good enough for the customers I'm trying to attract."

Sure enough, the blond guy with the cart has barely slid the peach pie into its yellow cubbyhole when the next woman in line orders two slices of it to take out, lighting up at the prospect.

"And what's with the goddamn name? Do you even own a trench coat?" is Dean's parting line as he storms out and walks all the way around the block instead of just going next door so that he can storm for a bit longer, and he tries his best to ignore the fact that normally there'd be a line of customers out of the door to his place at this time of day, but the only person in the room right now is Cain, with the same piece of strawberry rhubarb pie and large black coffee that he's ordered every day for years, pretty much since Dean opened the store.

Time shows that most of the drop in customers was due to first day excitement over the new store next door, because over the next few weeks Dean's business picks up until he's almost as busy as he always was. And another interesting thing starts happening, too. Castiel usually gets into work at about the same time as Dean starts opening up the shop, and sometimes Castiel sticks his head around the door to Green Eyes Pie to greet Dean.

"Good morning," he'll say, or something equally as innocuous. "How did you sleep?"

"I'd sleep a lot better if you weren't serving such terrible pie to your customers. They're good people and you should treat them as such," Dean replies one morning, the annoyed, snarky responses becoming part of his morning routine by this point.

"In that case you'll need some coffee to wake you up. I'll get you a discount. Mostly because I feel sorry for you that you have to drink that bean water all day." Castiel gestures to the coffee pot behind the counter.

"This is good, American coffee. And, hey, at least I brewed it myself!" Dean cries, indignant, but Castiel is gone by this point, gone to spend another day serving people with unnecessarily large thick rimmed glasses ordering drinks Dean can't pronounce the names of.

And Dean, who, before the coffee shop opened, often stayed in the kitchen of Green Eyes Pie for the entire day, not even taking a lunch break except to pinch a slice of blueberry fresh out of the oven, finds himself making excuses to leave his own shop in the middle of the day. He'll suddenly remember an urgent letter that he just has to mail, or it becomes vitally important that he go out to buy a new bottle of red food coloring right now instead of waiting for the shipment tonight. And on his way to do whatever errand he's concocted, he'll glance in on Castiel and he'll smile as he sees the man frown over an iced coffee, making sure the whipped cream forms a perfect swirl.

Castiel notices him, sometimes, and Dean's indulgent smile becomes a sarcastic wave. Whipped cream is stupid anyway, he has to remind himself, and coffee should be drunk black like it was intended, and there's definitely no excuse for Dean to be looking at Castiel's hands or his hair or his lips when Dean really should be focusing on making the best pie possible so that he can prove to Castiel that he's better.

Dean will admit to himself that he might have a little bit of a crush on the man who works next door, but he also knows that nothing is more important than the pie, so there's no way he'll ever act on the giddy feeling he gets in his chest when Castiel calls out a goodnight on his way home.

It's about a month after the coffee shop opens that it happens. This teenage girl comes crashing through the door and dumps a bunch of stuff she was carrying onto one of the tables before striding up to the counter, face red, clearly in a hurry. "Hi. I'm sorry to bother you, but it's my girlfriend's birthday today and I forgot to organize anything and she loves your pies and I was wondering if you had any whole ones that I could buy for her for this impromptu party we're having after school?"

Dean always gets weirdly excited whenever someone wants to buy a whole pie. Maybe it's because he secretly dreams of sitting down one day with an entire pie and not stopping until he's eaten it all. He's never done it, but he definitely thinks about it sometimes. "Of course! We have apple cinnamon and we have pumpkin, both just about to come out of the oven. You can get one while it's still hot."

The girl debates for a minute, but she decides on apple cinnamon, and Dean goes to fetch it. It's not until he's bagged it up carefully and she's paid and thanked him and is getting ready to leave when Dean notices what she brought with her. It's not just her school things as he originally thought. She's also got a huge cardboard tray full of takeout coffee cups from the place next door.

Dean would have been happy to give her just as much coffee for a much better price, but there's no point him telling her that, so he lets her leave.

Only from then on it starts happening more and more often. The breakfast crowd no longer comes through ordering a pastry and a coffee - they just get the pastry, and they're already holding their frothy concoctions and sipping from them as Dean fetches their chocolate chip muffin. The lunchtime customers knock back a pick-me-up espresso as they tuck into their slice of key lime. And the evening people come in with their fancy herbal teas which are apparently now the perfect accompaniment to the chicken pot pie Dean's been experimenting with recently.

It's weird, and on the one hand Dean's kind of pissed that the coffee in his pot goes cold most days, but on the other hand nobody is buying Castiel's shitty store bought pies and _that's_ definitely a blessing. So Dean doesn't mention it for a while, because he's scared that if he does, Castiel will start promoting the fact that he does baked goods too. 

But they still run into each other most mornings, and argue or flirt or whatever the hell they're doing here, and so it's bound to come up after a while. In the end it's Castiel who says the thing that triggers the conversation. He pokes his head around Dean's door as Dean is loading pies into the glass cabinet beneath the counter just before he opens for the day.

"Tried a slice of your pie yesterday," Castiel says casually as he stands in the doorway. "Raspberry."

"Oh yeah? What'd you think?" Dean is suddenly nervous. He's always a bit nervous around Castiel, but he's especially nervous now, because he can't stand the idea of somebody criticizing his pies. Especially not someone who he's boasted about them to as much as he has here. 

"I personally would prefer the filling a little sweeter. But the flavor was very good, and the pastry texture was excellent."

Dean breathes out a sigh of relief. "What do you know about pastry?" he laughs.

"Not a lot. But you should take the compliment." Castiel winks at him and saunters out to open up his own shop.

There's a pause in their discussion while they both spend the day running their businesses, and the next time Dean sees the guy is midmorning the following day. He's taking the trash out to the Dumpster behind the shops, and it's not the first time he's noticed that there's no fence or anything between the yard behind his store and the yard behind Castiel's, but it's the first time he's actually been confronted with the man out here.

Castiel is leaning against the back wall of the coffee shop, not smoking or texting or anything, just standing peacefully with his head tilted towards the sun. Dean takes a moment to appreciate how the sunlight makes the other man's face sparkle, before he clears his throat.

"So, I was actually wondering yesterday. How come you tried my pie? You definitely didn't get it from me." Dean had been behind the counter all day when Castiel claimed to have had some, and Dean would have noticed him come in.

Castiel looks up, startled, as though he's been awoken from sleep. "Sorry, I didn't see you there. It's the first hot day of the year. I got lost in my thoughts."

Dean grins, because it seems like such a pretentious hipster thing to come and stand outside in a back alley just to catch some sun, but the more he talks to Castiel the more he thinks the guy is actually genuine about everything he does. He's not just trying to look cool for other people. It's refreshing, and on top of that it's undeniably cute.

"One of my customers brought it in and left it on the counter by mistake. I went to run after them, but I lost them in the crowd outside. It seemed a shame to let it go to waste," Castiel admits.

Dean laughs, and then asks, intrigued, "So, does that happen a lot? People eating my pie in your shop?"

"Yes," Castiel frowns. "I wish they wouldn't make it quite so obvious, to be honest. It doesn't make me look great when new customers come in and they see everyone else sitting at my tables eating next door's pie."

Dean's sure that 'everyone else' is an exaggeration, but still. Maybe this mix-and-match thing is even bigger than he'd thought.

"Sorry about that. I can't help it that your Wal-Mart specials just don't compare to my handmade delights."

Castiel rolls his eyes. "On second thoughts, I think I've had enough of the sun now." He shoots Dean a wave and a smirk as he strolls back into the coffee shop.

It takes Dean a good few minutes to shake himself out of his thoughts long enough to actually go back inside.

Dean's going on a secret mission, and he needs an undercover man. Next time his brother Sam takes time out of his high-powered corporate job to stop by Green Eyes Pie, Dean tells him to go next door and order a coffee for each of them, but to not mention Dean's name to anyone at all.

"Alright. What kind of coffee do you want?" Sam's frowning, because he can see the coffee pot right behind Dean, but he seems to decide it's easier not to ask.

"I don't know their names. Whatever you think's good," Dean tells him, and Sam shrugs and leaves, reappearing fifteen minutes later with two cappuccinos.

Dean takes a sip, and it burns his tongue but it's _so totally worth it_ because he never knew coffee could taste so smooth and full of flavor, and maybe he died and went to heaven that morning after he ate that sandwich that had been left out on the counter overnight, because there's no way it's humanly possible to make a drink that tastes and smells and feels this amazing.

"Well, shit," he says, as he puts the coffee back on the counter.

Sam's own cup is halfway to his lips. "That bad?" he asks.

"No, that _good._ I... I have some serious thinking to do."

On the six month anniversary of Trench Coat Coffee's opening, Dean's finally got everything figured out in his head. It takes a while, but what it eventually comes down to is that he wanted to see more of Castiel - maybe a lot more - and he doesn't want to do it with this rivalry always coming between them. So he goes into Castiel's shop five minutes before closing time, so Dean can guarantee that Castiel will still be there, but so that not too many people will overhear their conversation. Castiel's face breaks into a wide smile when he sees who's just come in and he bounds over towards Dean, making Dean's heart speed up. It's not actually nerves because of what they're about to discuss; it just always does that in response to Castiel's smile.

"I don't often see you in here. What's up?" Castiel asks, and that's when Dean realizes that even though the two of them talk almost every day, it's always in Dean's shop, or outside. He hasn't been here since the first day, when he called Castiel out for serving store bought pie.

Dean looks around. The place doesn't look anywhere near as tacky as he remembers. It has a certain charm.

"I, uh, I actually had an idea. One that I wanted to talk to you about."

Castiel gestures, indicating that Dean should take a seat in a table by the window, and they both sit down opposite each other.

"So, your pie sucks," is Dean's opening line.

Castiel raises an eyebrow. "You've told me that many times. I don't see it as a new idea."

"But your coffee is awesome," Dean continues, ignoring the sarcasm, and Castiel shuts up at this because that's obviously not what he expected Dean to say. As far as he knew, Dean still thought his coffee was unnecessarily foamy and tasteless. "And people are always buying my pie, and your coffee. Which led to the obvious conclusion, why do you bother doing pie? And why do I bother doing coffee? And then I thought about it more and I realized the reason we both do both of those things... is because people like to eat them, together. Which led me to conclude that it would be a good... business strategy... if we merged our stores."

Castiel is speechless for a long time, then he chokes out, "Merged them?"

"My pie. Your coffee. One store."

"And why would I want to work with you?" Castiel asks slowly, and Dean can see his mind work through this, as though he's trying to figure out if Dean has ulterior motives here. To take over the whole combined store and put Castiel out of business, maybe. And Dean does have ulterior motives, but they're less 'stealing Castiel's money' and more 'kissing him on the mouth' so he puts on a cocky grin and says:

"Maybe because you'll get to see my adorable face every day."

He's joking, but at the same time he's totally not joking because that's exactly what he wants too.

"I already see your adorable face every day when I visit," Castiel points out, and half of Dean's brain is excited because of the implication that all those accidental run-ins are in fact purposeful visits, and the other half of Dean's brain won't shut up about the fact that Castiel called his face adorable, and overall he's grinning like an idiot before they've even agreed to anything.

"It wouldn't be easy," Castiel continues, but he's definitely thinking about it. "We'd probably have to close for a few weeks while we knock the wall through. There'd obviously be all kinds of paperwork, and that wouldn't be fun. And I wouldn't even know what to name the new place."

Dean coughs, embarrassed, because he has a solution to at least one of those problems. "Well, it's not like I've been giving this too much thought or anything. But as a name, I kind of liked The Angel Heart Cafe."

Castiel looks confused. "I'm not saying I don't like it, but how did you come up with that?"

Dean blushes, because he thinks they're on the same page but all the same, it's not easy to admit to stuff like this especially to a guy this amazing. But it's better to get rejected now than when you own a shop with somebody and you work together every day and your business ties are harder to get out of then a marriage. If he says this now, it won't be too late to pack all of his pies into a cooler and relocate his store by tomorrow morning.

"Because you look like an angel... and you have my heart."

Dean screws his eyes shut because he doesn't want to see Castiel's initial reaction because if it's disgust it'll hurt way too much, so he doesn't notice Castiel moving his chair round to be close to him. The next thing Dean feels is an arm around his waist and a pair of lips brushing his ear as he hears Castiel's whispered response.

"In that case, I think it's the perfect name."


End file.
